DescriptionTimor is an island in the middle of the long archipelago that extends from southern southeast Asia to New Guinea. It is about 4000 kilometers from Singapore, and 767 km to the small port of Darwin in northern Australia. It was part of the Majapahit Empire in medieval times. They exported sandalwood, slaves, honey, and wax, according to Wikipedia. Portuguese and Dutch colonies were established on different parts of the island in the 17th century. The Dutch part became part of Indonesia in 1949. The Portuguese part became unstable after the Portuguese revolution of 1974, and Indonesia invaded. They were unable to control the occupied territory, and, in 1999, after decades of occupation, a UN sponsored referendum brought a vote for independence. So now there are two administrations on the island, just as on New Guinea to the east.The big player in East Asia is China, of course. Then there is Japan and Korea, throw in Mongolia. South of China and east of India, but not including, for the most part, the islands to the east, is what we call Southeast Asia. From Burma to Malaya there have been a series of local kingdoms for about 2000 years. Russia, with its Asian Siberia, doesn’t count. We consider it part of Europe.By “Modern World Coins” we mean here, generally, the round, flat, shiny metal objects that people have used for money and still do. “Modern,” though, varies by location. There was some other way they were doing their economies, and then they switched over to “modern coins,” then they went toward paper money, now we’re all going toward digital, a future in which kids look at a coin and say “What’s that?” We’ll say: “We used to use those to buy things.” Kids will ask “How?” The main catalog reference is the Standard Catalog of World Coins, to which the KM numbers refer.
